The nameless dead: scientists hunt for identities of thousands who tried to
reach Europe
This article is more than 2 months old
Experts’ group employs new technologies and techniques to help relatives of
those missing in the migration crisis
Linda Geddes https://www.theguardian.com/profile/linda-geddes
Thu 2 Jan 2025 07.00 CET
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Four years ago, the remains of a toddler encased in a lifejacket and a navy
snowsuit washed up on a beach in southern Norway, having spent the previous
two months being carried on North Sea currents. Though his face was barely
recognisable, publicity about the sinking of the migrant boat he had been
travelling on, and suspicions about his identity, enabled Norwegian police
to locate a relative to whom his DNA could be matched, providing this
lonely corpse with a name: Artin Iran Nezhad
.
[image: Artin, aged 18 months]
The short life and long journey of Artin, found dead on Norway beach
Read more
Others remain nameless. Of the tens of thousands who die trying to reach
Europe, fewer than a quarter are ever formally identified
https://migrant-dvi.eu/. For their relatives, this lack of closure is a
continuing trauma. However, a recently established network of forensic
scientists is trying to change this, through the development of new
technologies and processes to aid identification efforts.
Launched in November last year, Migrant Disaster Victim Identification
(MDVI) Action https://migrant-dvi.eu/ brings together expertise from
across Europe to address what its chair, Prof Caroline Wilkinson of
Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), describes as a growing
humanitarian crisis of unidentified deceased migrants in Europe.
“It is thought that at least 25,000 people have died in the last 10 years
crossing the Mediterranean alone, and that’s not even accounting for those
who die on land and other routes,” said Wilkinson. “Only [about] 25% of
those are ever formally identified – and those are just the ones where the
bodies are found. There’ll be thousands of other bodies that have never
been recovered from those migrant disasters.”
[image: People’s belongings, along with a deflated dinghy, lifejacket and
engines, lie on the beach]View image in fullscreen
Belongings, a deflated dinghy, lifejacket and engines, lie on the beach at
Wimereux, Calais, after more than 30 people died trying to cross the
Channel on 25 November 2021. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
Although there is no official record of how many people have died trying to
cross the Channel, a recent report
by
openDemocracy estimated there were at least 391 deaths between 1999 and
2023, while the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) has
already proclaimed 2024 the deadliest year on record, with at least 57
Channel deaths
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/27/man-dies-cross-channel-uk-france
having
occurred between January and October.
However, such figures are a “bare minimum estimate, especially because in
overseas crossings, there’s a really high likelihood that boats just
disappear”, said Julia Black, of the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project
https://missingmigrants.iom.int/. “If they disappear without a trace,
realistically, the only people who know that they’re missing are the
families.”
Although it is relatively rare for bodies to wash up on UK shorelines,
“sometimes they do, and the French authorities have also had their fair
share”, said Det Supt Jon Marsden, the UK’s national disaster victim
identification coordinator. “If you’re proximate to the event, you’ll
hopefully recover an intact body, but should the passage of time have taken
hold, it might be that you end up with either body parts or skeletal
remains that need to be identified and repatriated, where possible. It is
very challenging, very difficult, very complicated work.”
One issue is that, unlike in other disasters, the people are often not
carrying passports or other forms of identification that could provide
investigators with strong clues about their identity. Another is a
reluctance by friends or family members to engage with the authorities in
countries where they suspect their loved one has disappeared, despite being
desperate for information about them.
Research
commissioned
by the IOM found that existing frameworks for dealing with missing person
inquiries in the UK were not inclusive enough to support the needs of such
families. Interviews with UK-based individuals who were searching for
someone who had gone missing on the way to the UK suggested fear about
their own immigration status was another common factor.
“I was really struck by one interviewee who said, ‘You can’t really be
searching for someone else, when you have to hide yourself,’” said Black.
[image: A child’s shoe lies on the sand on a beach in Dunkirk, France]View
image in fullscreen
Software has been developed to better predict where bodies or living
survivors of maritime accidents might be washed up. Photograph: Christopher
Furlong/Getty Images
Until recently, countries have been reluctant to treat migrant deaths as
disaster victim identification (DVI) incidents, meaning certain forensic
protocols may not be followed and optimal data collection may not occur.
“If it is a DVI incident, countries can also ask for help from Interpol
https://www.theguardian.com/world/interpol and from other member
countries, leading to more potential resources,” said Wilkinson. “If it is
not a DVI incident, then the investigation can often be considered
criminal, with negative implications for any survivors, support groups or
families of the victims.”
However, within the past two years, migrant-related discussions within
Interpol’s DVI working group have ramped up. According to Marsden, its
deputy chair, their main focus is on linkage and support to programmes such
as Wilkinson’s.
MDVI Action is primarily geared towards enhancing Europe’s capacity to deal
with the thousands of deaths on its borders, through building research
collaborations and increasing the number of people with the expertise to
help with such identifications.
One of its initiatives is exploring the use of “secondary identifiers”,
such as a person’s facial features, birthmarks, tattoos or piercings, as a
legal means of identification. Although such features are informally used,
dental records, DNA and fingerprints are currently the only identifiers
legally accepted. Yet mistrust of authorities means that family members may
be unwilling to provide samples of DNA for comparison with unidentified
human remains, while fingerprint and dental records for the missing person
may not exist.
[image: Lifejackets, sleeping bags and a damaged inflatable small boat on
the sand]View image in fullscreen
Lifejackets, sleeping bags and a damaged inflatable boat on the shore in
Wimereux, northern France on 26 November 2021. Photograph: Rafael
Yaghobzadeh/AP
Often more readily available are photographs of the missing person –
perhaps even taken on their journey – which they may have posted on social
media. In August, Wilkinson and her colleagues published a study
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00414-024-03286-0in which
postmortem images of 29 identified deceased migrants were compared with an
archive of images taken when these individuals were living. Following a
protocol they had previously developed, the researchers examined different
areas of the face to see if they could match the deceased individuals to
the correct living person. The overall accuracy rate was 85%.
Another collaboration that has grown from the MDVI initiative is the
development of handheld scanners that first responders or charity workers
could use to record deceased migrants’ features, before further
decomposition sets in, boosting the chances of a successful identification.
“The magic of 3D is that once an image is captured, you can change the
angles, the lighting and introduce various artefacts that might make the
face more recognisable to someone who knows the person, whereas a 2D
photograph [of the deceased] might be more of a struggle, said Dr Frederic
Bezombes at LJMU, who is developing the scanners.
Other recently developed technologies could be deployed to aid the recovery
of people who die at sea. Speaking at MDVI Action’s first annual conference
in September, Dr Tomasz Dabrowski at the Marine Institute in Galway,
Ireland described software he had developed that combined predictions of
ocean currents with models of how various types of particles behaved in the
presence or absence of wind, to predict where bodies or living survivors of
maritime accidents were likely to wash up. It is already being used by the
Irish authorities to aid their investigations.
[image: White trainer belonging to a migrant lying on the beach at Bleriot,
northern France, at the water’s edge in the dark]View image in fullscreen
‘This work is ultimately about the people who are left behind,’ said Det
Supt Jon Marsden of MDVI. ‘They can’t grieve properly until they get the
answers they deserve.’ Photograph: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images
Dabrowski said: “Previously, you would have had to ask a local expert who
knows how tides and ocean currents behave and interact with wind and air
pressure in a particular location to predict the most likely trajectory for
a missing boat or person.”
Although this technology is not funded by the MDVI project, and is not yet
being applied to UK or French migrant search and rescue operations,
Dabrowski said it held this potential, as the model covered the west of
Scotland, Irish Sea, the Channel and the French Atlantic coast.
Research into such methods is just beginning, and more will be needed to
establish its validity, but the moral case for putting a name to the
thousands who perish while trying to reach Europe or the UK is enormous.
“This work is ultimately about the people who are left behind. They can’t
grieve properly until they get the answers they deserve about their loved
one,” said Marsden. “No matter how big or small the part of them they get
back is, it is really important that they do. That is why we do this work,
so that we can help to close that chapter for them and allow them in some
way to move on.”